The “Awtomat Kalaschnikow”, is the world’s most renowned automatic weapon. In the dance production “Kalaschnikowa”, parallels can be drawn between the sounds made by the weapons rapid firing and the volley-like stomping of Flamenco dance.

In an interplay of thematic and physically reactive connecting points, the energies of perpetrator and victim, and of violence and vulnerability are investigated. Under whichever ideology one fires: the shots brutally perforate the silence, the soul’s space, the principles of live and let live, and our sense of security. The body rests the series of stomps from itself, fights for and through them. The footwork battles against the floor, the body, and the acoustics of the space, working against the exterior and the interior. The body becomes both the perpetrator and the victim itself possessed in one body, sometimes firm and armoured, other times cracked and fragile. The firing of the feet find resonance and reception in the bodies which produce them and which they collide with. These processes are self-inducing. They burst and rebound, create tension to release and collapse. The weapon, becomes a construct for destruction.

Vera Köppern performs this engagingly abstracted and often schizophrenic performance. She directs the audience’s attention with her differentiated rhythmic play and movement impulses. The recording device staged in the middle of the space, supports her performance visually and acoustically while she composes footwork patterns which are looped, delightfully extended, and developed. These compositions become the audio landscape for her movement. The audience is drawn in by this raw interplay of layered rhythms, and then enthralled by the kinesthetic-musical pull Köppern creates. Madness and fascination ensue.